Sometimes we treat health as this massive mountain we have to climb. We will only reach the peak if we eat perfectly. Follow the plan. And use every ounce of willpower to grind through it with gritted teeth.
Wrong mountain or wrong path?
Health and wellness is more simple than that. Less arduous to achieve. Health isn’t an unrealistic destination, it’s a habit. Something you do without thinking, like brushing your teeth. To improve your health, wellness needs to become second nature. Not viewed as aspirational, more automatic.
People talk about the need to be motivated, the need to be disciplined. It is considered a weakness to possess neither. It’s a false perception that these two factors hold the answer to attaining good health and wellness. They don’t, they are simply moods. They show up when life is easy and vanish as soon as life gets hard. They don’t run on consistency. Lack of motivation and discipline does not make you weak, it’s a misguided placement of trust.
You can’t rely on them to have your back. You need them when you’re struggling, which is exactly when they disappear and leave you to battle on alone. So when you hear the saying “just stay motivated” it’s an empty promise, unfounded advice that will leave you feeling like a failure. But you didn’t fail, you just backed the wrong horse.
Habits don’t fail you, they give you a foundation, something to build on.
The good news is there is no big overhaul necessary, no dramatic transformation required. It’s more unremarkable than that.
Start absurdly small. Replace one coffee with a glass of water. Go for a walk, long or short. Put down your phone, watch a film, actually watch it.
None of these things look like much. And that’s the point. Habits are small, unexceptional and repeated which is exactly why they work. Exactly why you can rely on them. No one transforms their health in one massive day. Health and wellness can be transformed in a thousand small ones, that stack up quietly, over months, over years, until one day you’re living the life you envisaged.
Here’s the part that is easy to miss though. Forming a new habit does take some effort at first, in order for it to become established. You have to choose it, deliberately, several times over. But that effort is only temporary. Once the habit is set, you no longer need to actively choose it. Your brain steps aside and autopilot takes over.
Discipline is similar to a down payment, you don’t have to take on the whole mortgage. You don’t need endless willpower. Habit building requires just enough repetition that the choice you have already made a long time ago, is yours to keep. And that’s why habits work, they become ingrained. It’s the consistency that succeeds in making you stronger, healthier.
No magic revamp. One small thing done on repeat until it stops requiring thought. You no longer have to go through the daily negotiation with yourself over what workout to do, or whether today is the day you finally start eating better. Trust in the fact that this is what you do. Then go do it.
That’s not discipline, that’s freedom.
Final Words
Creating a few small habits can make a big difference to your health and wellness. It’s the habitual, that forms the long term picture. Unlike the daunting prospect of making huge radical change in your daily life, choosing a few small tiny alterations that become normalized very quickly, is liberating.
Not having to constantly think or decide on what you should be doing, and relying on what you always do, through choices you made, relieves the challenging pressure of deliberating on a daily basis.
It’s the path of a thousand small steps that conquers the mountain.
PS “Little by little, the bird builds it’s nest.” A french proverb. Release the pressure contact positive-soul.co.uk today.